Okay, we know that when you first hear that an American Idol Digital Camcorder exists, your first reaction might be to leave the site, never to return. However once you actual see and play with Digital Blue’s American Idol Digital Camcorder, you discover how wrong your first reaction was. You see, the product is powerful and yet easy to use from both a hardware and software standpoint. This is the camera I dreamed about having when I was a kid.

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In an interesting turn of events, it appears that Apple may be prepared to release 2 GB and 4 GB iPod shuffles. The suspected timeline for release according to DigiTimes would see the 2 GB shuffle hitting the market sometime next month, with a 4 GB model to follow in August. Why is it that I think this is interesting? Well, flash memory is more expensive than a hard drive of the same capacity. This would mean that a 4 GB iPod shuffle could potentially end up costing more than a 4 GB iPod mini. Not sure how well that would go over with the masses.

If you needed proof that we now live in a digital age, here it is. The band Coldplay had their hopes of a #1 debut for their newest single dashed this weekend when “Crazy Frog Axle F,” a wildly popular ring tone, sold more copies. That’s right – a mobile phone ring tone is topping the charts in the UK right now.

Update: It has been falsely reported, with the popularity of this super-hot new ringtone, that the song was originally written less than a decade ago by a 17-year-old Swedish student. However, a sharp-eyed reader pointed out that the song is much older – appearing on the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack in 1984.

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MacMerc has reviewed the popular webcast client iPodder X to give us insight as to whether we should fork over $24.95 to purchase. What do you get for your money? Besides the client itself you’re registered to win an iPod shuffle or iPod photo. Those of you that already own version 2.0 can get 3.0 for free now. For what it’s worth, the guys at MacMerc really like it.

New technology may level the playing field, or more accurately, the court, making sure that hoop dreams (or even just a back-yard game of one-on-one) are pleasures no longer reserved for those with good vision.

Ultra-lightweight sound-emitting devices embedded in the ball and placed on the backboard allow blind and visually impaired players to shoot hoops with more independence, since they can hear the location of the ball and the basket. The prototype isn’t perfect, but shows quite a bit of promise in opening up the world of sports to anyone who wants to play.

Last March, the European Union’s Antitrust Regulators slapped Microsoft with a whopping $624,000,000.00 fine (that’s 624 million United States Dollars – and that ain’t chump change!) for using their market-dominating Windows software “abusively” to lock out competition in the EU. Additionally, the Redmond, WA based software giant was forced to share their source code selectively with rivals to encourage competition.

EU antitrust chief Neelie Kroes said last week she wants to take stock of the situation by Wednesday and could move to impose sanctions on noncompliance soon afterward if she is not satisfied with the concessions. The EU has within its rights the possibility to fine Microsoft up to 5 percent of its daily global sales for each day that a decision is not applied to its satisfaction.

In other words, Microsoft will be subject to huge fines and penalties if, by Wednesday, 01 June 2005, there aren’t more concessions made in favor of the competition in Europe. Microsoft has yet to reach a compromise as the deadline looms nearer, and the EU threatens sanctions and punishment that could be as steep as 5% of Microsoft’s global daily sales for each day that passes after the deadline, before an agreement is reached. And that really isn’t chump change.

Intel announced the launch of its new Pentium D dual-core processor, as well as the accompanying 945 chipset, this past Thursday. During the launch, Intel failed to talk about the new digital rights management technology featured in the new platform. This is really the beginning of the trusted computing (TC) age. TC is basically DRM at the processor level rather than in software. TC will make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. In the first version of TC, pirate software could be detected and deleted remotely. The plus here is that if you run a business where you distribute shareware which has an expiration date - try before you buy - you now have the opportunity to greatly reduce the instances of your material being pirated.

What is kakorrhaphiophobia? Aside from being a word that is near impossible to pronounce correctly, it happens to be a morbid fear of failure. One of the things about starting a business on the Internet is that since the medium is still relatively new, and Internet users can be fickle, there is a lot of risk involved. Once you get started there will be so many things you will need to do to keep things afloat depending on what type of business you are choosing to run. The thing is, you really should expect to fail in certain aspects of your business at least once. The following article takes a look at a few key areas in which you should not only expect to fail in at some point, but how to learn from it and use it to your advantage in the future.

Noted by EGM, France’s Bibliothèque nationale de France allows a person with a cellphone to literally call the building and play a few classic games: Tetris, Pong, Breakout, and Pac-Man. Anyone standing in front of the building (during certain unknown times of the year according to EGM) can play one of those games by calling the building. The building-sized version of Pong even has support for two cellphone players. Suddenly my big screen TV doesn’t seem so cool.